We’ve all wondered, “what is a good manager”? Is a manager also a leader, or are they different? Do some people make great leaders and others great managers? Is there overlap? Should there be? What are the traits that set them apart? Are there great managers the higher you go on the corporate ladder, or do those people turn into leaders? Are there leaders near the bottom of the ladder who aren’t managers?
A few years ago, I worked with a woman who had a great team. Her staff had a tremendous amount of respect for her and would work long hours to get the work done. The team was recognized as being forward-thinking and doing transformative work. But her supervisor never commented on how she treated her staff. She never reflected on how after three years, she didn’t have any turnover. But when the manager left, everyone on her team left as well. Two stayed at the organization but took different roles; one left and moved across the country.
After the manager left, her name was rarely spoken, rarely mentioned.
Last week I was speaking with one of the people whom she hired. And he summed up all of the mystery in one sentence, “when she interviewed me, she focussed on my music, it had nothing to do with the job that I was interviewing for, but everything to do with who I am. She could see how my skills as a musician translated into the skills required of the job.”
She knew what made her staff tick. She knew their passions, their side hustles, their goals. She knew how to push them to work harder and strive for more than what was expected. She asked them to make their boundaries and apply the same enthusiasm they had for their personal projects to their work projects.
She didn’t see them as someone who showed up for work at 9 am every day. And, better yet, she didn’t hold them to the 9 am start time. She understood that as a musician working in the studio until 2 am, it was hard to expect great work from him at 9 am, so she was flexible. She let him come in at 10 or 11 if it meant that he would apply the same work ethic during his day job that he did at his night job. And he did. So the rest of her team.
We don’t talk about what makes someone a great manager at work. We don’t talk about why one person will work ten times harder than someone else in a similar role. We expect everyone to work that hard.
What if we started to talk about it? What if we began to say, my best manager was Susie because she took an interest in who I was. She took an interest in what I wanted to become. She gave me her shoulder when I was having a hard time, and she shared it with me when she needed my shoulder. She saw in me all of the potentials that I had, and she believed it would come out. She cheered for me and pushed me to be better. And, most importantly, and I think this is what makes the most significant difference, she cheered as hard for me as she cheered for everyone else who worked for her. She wasn’t just my greatest fan. She was everyone on the team’s greatest fan.
She didn’t have favorites. Her favorite was all of our success.